ALA joins national campaign to protect American privacy

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — This week, as the Cybersecurity Act (CSA) moves to the Senate floor, the American Library Association is joining a wide-ranging coalition of digital rights groups and advocates by launching the Stop Cyber Spying campaign to ensure companies do not have new, overbroad authority to monitor and block private communications.

The campaign encourages individuals to contact their Senators to support amendments to CSA that would better safeguard privacy. The Stop Cyber Spying coalition supports an amendment from Senators Al Franken and Rand Paul.

The coalition also opposes attempts to remove privacy protections in the bill, including any amendments that would hand the reins of America's cybersecurity systems to a secretive military intelligence agency like the National Security Agency (NSA), which is not accountable to the public for what it does with our private data.

In April, a similar coalition joined forces for the original Stop Cyber Spying campaign, a week of action in opposition to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, otherwise known as CISPA. Ultimately, CISPA passed the House of Representatives, but not before major outcry that helped lead to substantial privacy improvements, a veto threat from the White House and a significant number of "no" votes on a bill that previously looked poised to sail through with little opposition.

The Stop Cyber Spying campaign now hopes to beat back floor amendments to the CSA that could make the bill look more like CISPA.

The Twitter hashtag for the campaign is #DefendPrivacy.

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About the American Library Association

The American Library Association is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with more than 60,000 members in academic, public, school, government, and special libraries. The mission of the American Library Association is to provide leadership for the development, promotion and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all.